Conspiracy Trial Wraps Up; Student Denies Being ‘plant’

Arguments in the conspiracy trial of Yigal Amir, his brother Hagai Amir and friend Dror Adani wrapped up this week.

A ruling is expected sometime in September.

One of the defense witnesses who testified on the last day was Avishai Raviv, the Bar-Ilan University student who had earlier denied reports that he was an operative for the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service.

The two Amir brothers and Adani are accused of plotting to kill Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Yigal Amir is already serving a life sentence for assassinating Rabin on Nov. 4.

In the initial days after Rabin’s assassination, it was reported that Raviv was a Shin Bet plant in right-wing extremist groups and that he knew Amir, but had failed to inform the security service of Yigal Amir’s plan to kill the prime minister.

In court this week, Raviv again denied that he worked for the Shin Bet.

But he acknowledged that he knew Yigal Amir from their studies at Bar-Ilan and that they were active in political demonstrations against terrorist attacks or to show support for Jewish settlements.

“There was a core of about 30 to 40 people who took part in these demonstrations for ideological reasons,” Raviv said. “Yigal Amir was among them. So was I.”

Raviv added, “At these demonstrations, people would shout, `Rabin is a traitor,’ `Death to Rabin.’ No one took them seriously. It was part of the general mood. People spoke in a general sense about hurting Rabin.”

Raviv said that once, after the assassination and funeral, he was placed in the same holding cell as Amir. “I don’t know why they put me in there,” Raviv said. “We didn’t talk much, we were tired.

“I told him that the entire nation is mourning, that people came from all over the world for [Rabin’s] funeral and that everyone is condemning what he did.”